This tutorial explains how to create one of Simon C Page’s seemingly complicated posters via some nifty tricks in Illustrator and InDesign CS5. Like most of his more intricate designs, he created this using Flash Professional CS5’s ActionScript language – but here he shows you how to do it in Illustrator, using that application’s ExtendScript toolkit.

This part of the tutorial should give you enough to get you up and running with some basic scripting and an appetite to see the host of styles you can create with scripts – styles that would take you countless hours to replicate by hand.

You’ll then learn how to take this artwork and turn it into a poster, drawing on the styles of classic 1950s book covers.

Step 1 The first step is to create the main framework for this artwork, which is created out of a very large number of concentric squares and lines rotated round into a circle. This design is going to be square, but there is no reason you couldn’t replicate it with a circle or rectangle, for example.

The artwork needs to be 22 x 22 inches square, and so the first square to draw should be around 21 x 21 inches, giving you a nice one-inch border. Make sure you leave the black 1pt border on, this will also be useful later on.